Israel, Unpopular and Embattled, Fights On

You might think that Israel, facing a worldwide wave of contumely (the “genocidal” Jewish state), and embattled simultaneously on five fronts, with enemies dedicated to its elimination in Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, Judea and Samaria, and Iran, would be mired in a slough of despond. Not at all. The Israelis’ remarkable resilience in the face of so much hate is discussed here.

…Then there is Israel, far away in the Middle East, a region not exactly known for tranquility. Noisy and quarrelsome Israelis rate their lives as more satisfying than Swedes, Swiss, Americans, Australians, Canadians, Italians and Singaporeans. Israel ranks first in the world for the number of living kidney donations (including altruistic ones) per capita, a result largely due to the Matnat Chaim organization in Jerusalem.

Compared with a West that looks backward with nostalgia and forward with pessimism, the Bank of Israel forecasts say the Jewish state’s economy will grow by 5.6 percent in 2026 and by 7.5 percent in 2027. The country will be called upon to make difficult and strategic choices, from accelerating military self-sufficiency from the United States to an industrialization that abandons European partnerships for anti-Chinese Asian alliances and anti-Iranian Arab ones (since October 7, Israeli tech companies have lost 8,500 employees due to emigration).

Meanwhile, Israel is third in the world in the startup ranking (Global Startup Ecosystem Index 2026), is the country with the highest score worldwide for “quality of social relations” (the country is united, a crucial factor for overall well-being), ranks tenth for the number of Nobel Prizes won (in per capita terms it surpasses the United States, Germany, France, Canada and Japan), fourth in the world for scientific publications, sixth in the World Index of Healthcare Innovation (Israel conceived itself as a nation that could, as Arieh Herzog, former head of Israel’s missile defense agency, said, “innovate or disappear”), fifth for the number of patents per capita (after Japan, Sweden, Switzerland and South Korea, all countries not at war) and –

Nowhere else among developed countries are so many children born as in the Jewish state (and by 2050 it is projected that Israel will be twenty years younger than Italy, Spain and Germany).

Despite the Second Intifada, the wars in Gaza and October 7, the net migration balance is 480,094 people who have arrived in Israel from all over the world from 2000 to today.

Meanwhile the Israeli region on the border with Gaza, known as “Tekuma” (rebirth), has grown by ten percent compared with the situation prior to the October 7, 2023 attack. What other people with Western customs would return en masse to live where just three years ago more than twelve hundred of their fellow citizens were murdered in medieval scenes?

The Little Satan laughs happily, because it has learned not to confuse unpopularity with defeat and has taught the world that one can live very well even at the foot of a volcano….

The number of children people have is an indication of how they feel about the future. Israeli women have the highest fertility rate of any women in the O.E.C.D., a vote of confidence in the future of the Jewish state.

And so the Israelis, long inured to physical threats to its wellbeing that no other Western country faces, continue having babies, innovating new and breathtaking technologies of every sort, from weapons to medical equipment to ways to produce water, carry on their thriving democracy, and — in the midst of the baseless worldwide hatred directed at their tiny, embattled Jewish state — manage to be among the happiest people on earth.

By now, meanwhile, half the world seems to think that Israel has committed “genocide” in Gaza. It’s a preposterous charge. At its heart, “genocide” requires intent. The IDF has not intended, nor has it ever tried, to wipe out Palestinian civilians. The Israeli military has made a tremendous effort, including dropping millions of leaflets, sending millions of text messages, and making millions of robocalls as well as utilizing the “knock-on-the-roof” technique, to warn civilians away from sites about to be targeted. Meanwhile, Hamas makes every effort to embed its men and its weapons in civilian structures — schools, mosques, hospitals, apartment buildings — using Gazan civilians as hostages, whose deaths can be exploited for propaganda purposes.

Israel has sent into Gaza close to two million tons of humanitarian aid, mainly food and medicine. Would a “genocidal” state do that? Israel worked with the World Health Organization to ensure that a million children in Gaza were vaccinated against polio. Is that “genocide”?